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Flame: “I wanted to raise my worth as a player. In order to do so, I need to go to worlds. I chose Immortals considering all that.”

Immortals’ new top laner saw worlds in his decision to play for a North American team.

Lee “Flame” Ho-jong said in an interview with Fomos’ Kim Yong-woo that the decision to join North America’s Immortals was part of his plan to boost himself by way of qualifying for the League of Legends World Championship.

“I wanted to raise my worth as a player,” he said. “In order to do so, I need to go to worlds. I chose Immortals considering all that.”

A couple of the concerns that come with a Korean player joining a foreign team are communication and culture clashes, but Flame assures fans that he is getting along fine with his new team.

“Since all my teammates aren’t Korean I was a little nervous, but after two games with them, that feeling disappeared,” he said.

Another point of interest is how well Flame can work with new Immortals jungler Joshua “Dardoch” Hartnett. Flame said that the friendliness that came across during the stream of IEM Gyeonggi also exists behind the scenes.

“We joke around and get along great even when we’re not playing the game,” he said. “(When he made a mistake with Lee Sin) we laughed and talked about how mistakes like that shouldn’t happen again.”

Above all, Flame seemed to be happy with how the team is coming together, and though there is plenty of room for improvement, there is a good sense of faith among teammates.

“It feels great since there seems to be a real sense of trust in our first competitive game as a team,” he said. “I was a little nervous because it’s my first game and I wasn’t able to show a great performance, but it’s great that we won.”